


Anthology of Humanity

by crystalpepes



Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Nature, No Lesbians Die, Non-Graphic Smut, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Nonbinary Character, Personal Growth, Self-Acceptance, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29538873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalpepes/pseuds/crystalpepes
Summary: Snapshots from the lives of humans, and the experiences therein.





	Anthology of Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> yes this is based off of Nature's Child by The Arcs and i am not ashamed to say so.

I was born amongst trees, raised from the dirt by my mother’s prayers and father’s will. The beauty of life is creation in a garden, a womb long rotted and seeds found in the corner of a shed. As a child, I sat in my mother’s garden, rich dirt under my nails and the sweet scent of her flowers in my hair. Love was so freely exchanged between the earth and the plants, the bees and the pollen, my mother and my father.

I was taught to love everything, from the biggest tree to the smallest ant. Love poured from our little brick home with ivy trellises and a white door. I had thought my mother a witch when I was young, but not in such a harsh way. I thought of her as what she really was, magical, kind, and so giving to the world. She would sit me on our porch swing and we would watch the sunset as she told me her wisdom, passed from generations.

"Love is something we give because we can. My sweet girl, I want you to give love to your earth and love to your people." 

I was raised outside, feral in a way, encouraged so strongly by my parents’ will to live as I wish, under the sunshine and sipping dew from the plants that dominated our home. My father would lift me to the ceiling of the sky in the backyard, my delighted screams would be punctuated by my mother pointing a gardening shear to him and telling him not to crack my head open. I would spend hours outside combing the grass for ladybugs, learning the calls of birds, and writing down all the facts of life in the little leather journal my father passed onto me. These discoveries always led to something, a scraped knee, a bumped head, and on one occasion, a broken wrist. 

I knew if I had ever been hurt, my mother would nourish me back to health, like how she nourished her garden, and nothing could die under her hands, even if they had the sheer will. 

I learned by watching my mother tend to the plants, sleeves up to her elbows and a large hat on to protect her skin from the sun. I saw as she gave hours to let her plants flourish, I saw as my father brought her home countless saplings, half between life and death, and how she brought them back to life with tender care and sweet words. I learned from watching my father carve beautiful works of wood and him pointing out the various creatures that they both love and tended to. I was their daughter, the same way these animals were like their children. 

“Life is an exchange, darling girl.” She’d murmur into my hair every night, scrubbing the dirt and the harsh stains of the love of plants (tree sap seeped into my skin) from me and rinsing away the sweet scent of earth. My mother would give anything for me to learn her lessons fully, to internalize them. To learn the ways of the world in a forgiving way, to be good and loving simply because of my parentage. 

Even as I left home, no longer a child being vaulted into the sky or looking for fairies in the backyard, I held her teachings so closely. Life is an exchange, you give more than you take. I’ve never doubted that I haven’t gotten what I deserve, as my mother would stir honey into our tea and tell us how like she inherited the earth from her mother, I would as well one day. I had been so excited, when I was younger, to inherit the world. To have this lovely brick house, to have a husband that would teach my child with me, to have the world in my palms and the same sweet gaze my mother held. 

I had returned home after the death of my father, and did not realize my mother was soon close behind him. She cooed at my growing stomach and my husband's generosity, the ring that he made me glinted in the candlelight. She would sit in her rocking chair and phase in and out of life. I did not realize the weight the inheritance would carry, and as I see my mother now, and wonder where the years have gone as she sits on the couch, her gaze has gone searching into the distance. My mother, the grandest of caretakers, the one who would name each blossom and could coax even a wasp to love her. My mother, who could only remember me as a child, with twigs in my hair and scratches from fighting my way up the surly oak in our backyard. 

My mother, who has forgotten my name, forgotten about the garden, my mother, who has grown so many things, sits wasting on the couch. My mother, who calls out for my father, her mother, her father. My mother, no longer the woman with a sweet gaze and a thumb evergreen. She’s not much time left, I realize as I place a cup of tea in front of her, swirling in the honey so gently. She doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink. She no longer nourishes herself with the fruits of her labor, from her many years of cultivating a garden that had spanned into my heart. 

“Mom, you need to drink. Please?”

She had a smile on her face, her eyes still in the distance. “Darling girl, you’re too young to fret over me like this. Go play outside, live your life. One day…” Her eyes seem to flicker, and I had hoped so hardly she would come back into this world, away from the nostalgia of the past, away from the distance. “You will inherit this world, like I had.”

I had planted flowers above her grave, next to my father’s. I had inherited a world that seemed so dim without her life, her kind words, her advice. I felt so alone, sitting in the garden like a child again, weeping against the dead plants and the empty, empty feeling of a home that had once had so much life inside of it. And how I missed my parents, the world seemed lost without their minds. I was lost without their minds. I was so besides myself with grief, with the pain of loss and a foggy mind. 

It felt like a millennia of crying, reviving the garden with my tears. I dug my fingers into the earth, and realized that under her favorite plant, a hyacinth, a new bloom began to form. I wonder if my mother felt this way, when her mother gave her the earth to inherit. As my fingers traced over the bloom, I remember how my mother would say that life is an exchange. Even death was considered an exchange, and as her body was lowered into her deep grave, she had given her life for me to continue the cycle. 

She had always wanted to teach me to the fullest extent, she had wanted me to realize that lessons do not come without example. 

I had my inheritance between my fingers, and one day my daughter would get the same.


End file.
